Google Dart Article Correction

I'm the author of the article "Introducing Dart, the New Web Language from Google" in the March 2013 issue. I wrote the article in late December and submitted the article in early January of this year. During the time I was writing it, I was using Dart M2 (version 0.2.9.9). I made sure to have my colleagues check over my code and worked to make sure that everything was perfect!

"Best laid plans of mice and men often go astray." These words are all too true for me, since only nine days before the release of the March 2013 issue, Google released Dart M3, and with it came a new, non-backward-compatible standard library API. Of course, I didn't see that it had released the new version until February 28, 2013, which was hours before the March issue was going to be sent to everyone.

So what was I going to do? After I wiped the stunned look of realization off of my face, I quickly worked to update all of the example code that was now broken to use the newest API. I posted an entry on my blog at http://jamesslocum.com/post/44259278296 where I describe what happened, and I explain the differences between M2 and M3 Dart. I also provide re-worked examples that can be run with the newest versions of Dart and Dartium.

I apologize to any reader who was confused or frustrated trying to run the examples listed in the article. I assure you great care was put into writing them and they work perfectly on the M2 release. I had no way to predict that such a large breaking change would occur right before the article went to print.

I still think you should give Dart a solid chance. While the timing wasn't the best, the changes Google made were very good and moved Dart toward a more cohesive API. As any Rails developer knows, breaking changes can be hard, but they are usually for the best!

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